Slashdot Mirror
AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet
Simon Wright writes "As a website that is featured heavily in many Google Australia search results, Whirlpool (Australia's largest technology forum) has been particularly affected by AVG's LinkScanner. We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second from these bots. So we've actively and loudly campaigned against this move by AVG, encouraging all users of AVG 8.0 to uninstall the product. The discussion starts here. And AVG's backing down is posted here."
From that URL:"'As promised, I am letting you know that the latest update for AVG Free edition has addressed and rectified the issue that [Whirlpool] have brought to our attention. This update has now been released to users and has also been built into the latest installation package for AVG Free.' — Peter Cameron, Managing Director, AVG Australia."
Can it be shown that they have stopped doing this accross the board? Or only for the "high rollers"? It wouldn't surprise me if such a bunch of assholes as these only "whitelist" people that can sue them.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I was looking at alternatives to AVG because of this. Good to know I don't have to keep looking.
I fail to see what Grisoft ever thought LinkScanner would acheive above the scanners that are becoming common in competing products that simply intercept http and pop3 traffic as it comes over the network. To me it seemed unnecessary to actually fetch every single search result. It also would obviously interfere with web analytics, and is potentially a security risk to people using AVG, not in terms of desktop security, but in terms of your real-life personal security. For example, I recall a recent article where the FBI had arrested people merely for clicking links to a porn site they had set up. Are you really safe from such operations and the general tendency of Government agencies to monitor activity these days when your computer is in effect programmed to click links for you?
I don't see information at the links in the summary of what changes were actually made to AVG now. Does anyone have details?
The site complains to AVG that its load has increased, so in response in gets a /.ing. Nice!
Anyway, the statement that "We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second" is meaningless without knowing the overall traffic levels - for example, is +12/sec an increase of 100%, or an increase of 1%?. It's referred to as a "significant drain" on resources, but quoting one number without the other is pointless.
I use AVG... and was watching this.
I'm sure they thought it was a good idea, and sometimes good companies make bad moves.... I got AVG because leo laporte reccomended it, and dammit, i like leo.
But things change over time... is AVG still a good free AVG prog? And I dont mean just because of this controversy, they made good on it and responded. I mean the long haul.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Always liked nod32 better. Or even panda av. Or bitdefender.
And theres always the online scan that will test one file with a bunch of scanners...
http://www.virustotal.com
They even have avg on their test list.
But the only scanner i use daily is common sense. And you can't get that from any site. :)
I had already disabled LinkScanner.
I followed instructions as posted recently here to remove LinkScanner: this resulted in a re-install of AVG (without LinkScanner). The first update this re-install wanted was LinkScanner plus plugins, there was no way I could cancel and just get virus definitions, no point in continuing.
I have installed Clam. Now I can scan what I want when I want.
I use AVG8 Free fairly stripped down but this hasn't happened to me. Did you install SafeSurf/SafeSearch? I found those features useless and annoying you couldn't deselect them at install.
/REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch as a command switch to the installer will remove those two features.
I'll agree that AVG8 Free by default is pretty annoying and memory hog-ish, but if you get rid of the silly Internet Security features you're left with a reasonable on-access scanner with a UI better than Avast!'s IMO.
Run Linux, then you can tell all those virus-writing-wankstains to go suck a fat cuze.
Or, if you must run Windows, ditch ALL your anti-virus/anti-spyware/third party firewalls and set all your everyday users as Limited Accounts. I've been running like this for over 18 months and I'm completely malware-free.
Squirrel!
I use AVG free but I disabled the stupid link scanner when I got it a while back because I figured it'd slow my browsing. :) FTW!
Users of Zeus Technology's ZXTM could use the following TrafficScript rule to protect themselves from AVG's DDoS attacks:
if( http.getHeader("Accept-Encoding") == "" &&
http.getHeader("Referer") == "" )
{
$ua = http.getHeader("User-Agent");
if( $ua == "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)"||
$ua == "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813)"||
$ua == "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)"||
$ua == "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813)" )
{
connection.discard();
}
}
I use Steganos which is based on AVG iirc. I guess it's patched as well.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Thing about Whirlpool is that it's a custom CF package developed by the webmaster and it's a thing of beauty. The ugly thing about is that it's hosted on WebCentral.
WebCentral... Whirlpool doesn't have to pay any money to WebCentral, they host it for free. The funky thing is that almost nobody on Whirlpool ever recommends WebCentral for webhosting. They recommend all sorts of other companies in Australia, except probably the most vocal one, WebCentral.
The reason? I've got customers that have PHP and ASP websites with WebCentral and pay $40 a month for a massive 200 MB of storage and 1 GB of transfers. Which is nothing these days. And for that amount of money, you'd think that the sites would at least be quick... think again. They are slow because WebCentral really don't know what they are doing. They've only got IIS and the first access to a website always takes ages for the DLL of the virtual site to start up and do its stuff. All the subsequent accesses are pretty quick. 12 accesses per second for the biggest techie forum in Australia shouldn't be all that much extra and certainly shouldn't bring the server to its knees. Search on Whirlpool hasn't been working most of the time because WebCentral's servers just won't take it. Full-text search will never exist, not as long as it's on WebCentral anyways.
WebCentral got bought out, not too long ago, by MelbourneIT, a registrar for .au domains, so you'd think that WebCentral had a clue when it came to DNS. They don't. I asked them to set up a new subdomain with a different IP address? What do they do? The redirect mail.something.com.au to point to the new IP address, with the hilarious consequence of a dozen people not being able to get any emails for a few days.
And then there's the case of the $65 for 2 year domain registration. You'd think that would include DNS hosting, as asiaregistry.com do for $30 for 2 years. MelbourneIT offers a 1-page website for $140 for 2 years. Well, think again. The $65 only cover domain reservation. It means that you register a domain, pay them money, but that's it. They sell you a product that's more than twice as expensive than with a reasonable competitor, but you can't actually do anything with it. No, what you want is 'Domain Parking', there's no way to get DNS hosting apart from that. $240 for 2 years. We've had domain names with AsiaRegistry for years now, and they've been absolutely reliable, more so than WebCentral will ever be.
I called them about that, they say that the advantage is them being a local business. That's the entire argument. A local business with shit webhosting and crap value. Don't ever do business with WebCentral.
There's no way I'd ever post this on Whirlpool, because it'd get removed by WebCentral, one way or another, immediately. And there's no way you'll see Simon Wright responding to me, it's like everything is open for discussion on Whirlpool as long as it's on topic, except WebCentral. They do provide hosting for free and can make Simon's life a bit uncomfortable at least if WebCentral is all of a sudden open for discussion.
Your statements might have been nearly true some years ago, but the world is not as simple anymore.
If the informed user does not run software that is exploited, he does not run any software at all. There are always some bugs that are actively used to compromise systems. You acknowledge the gap between the time a exploit is found and the patch being made. But you seem to believe that every vulnerability is at once public knowledge.
AV software is not only to protect systems from being compromised, the identify compromised systems.
... contains some kind of overflow bug? I guess hundreds of thousands of AVG equiped PCs will get infected instantly?
A programm that fetches each and every link it comes across *can't* be a very good idea. Certainly a feature invented by people without a security mindset?
I've never ran an antivirus in the 8 years I've used windows.
I've periodically ran scans from antivirus.com to confirm that I have no viruses, and I haven't had any obnoxious (I won't say no spyware, the definition is rather broad ...) spyware in the last 5 years ...
Really, safer web habits and nat based firewall are an excellent defense. You don't always need resource hogging programs or top tier firewalls to protect your computer, just think twice before clicking random links!
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
Uh, vector #1 includes basic Windows networking.
Seriously, take an XP box and plug it directly into a home cable/ADSL modem.
About a year and a half back, I did that for maybe a week. I'd kept all the crit updates in there, and yet the AV software would pop up every few hours announcing that a new gift had arrived on the PC. Installed a third-party firewall, and then put the thing behind a router/hardware firewall.
Malware evolves rapidly, and we as individuals can't spend as much time combating it as the makers do in developing it. Sure, by only using trusted programs, only surfing to known sites, and never opening suspect attachments, you'll avoid all but 1% of the types malware out there. But when you're talking about thousands of types, the odds aren't so good.
And, when you're talking about a home environment, where the "administrator" cannot lock down the usage all the time, you better have something.
You also left out a vector #3) any software defect that, when combined with networking, leads to an unsafe situation. Using images to trigger buffer overflows and execute code, for example. Or exploiting a Flash bug. Now, combine that with an exploit to gain access to third-party ("Trusted") web servers, and everyone's gonna need something.
As bad as it was, AVG's spoofing the useragent as IE6 was pretty smart: if a site has malware, it'll deliver it to IE6.
I already switched from AVG to Avast. One thing I noticed, is that under Vista, the "AVG safe search" doesn't get uninstalled from the Internet Explorer. Mind you, I use Firefox, but after uninstalling the AVG, I realized that I haven't checked if the IE also has this piece of software in it. Well, it does, and now I have no idea how to get rid of it without fiddling with the registry. IE doesn't let me delete the component even with Admin privileges. Any ideas how to get rid of it? Google turned up only similar questions but no solution.
I wouldn't have worried too much anyway (if you're not using AVG), this AVG DDOS problem is self-solving.
Goddamned sales-speak, full of lies and deception, as always. There was no "issue" to "addres and rectify" after being "brought to attention". Of course they knew it would work like that, they desgined it to. They just thought they would get away with it. The world would be a better place if it were to be criminal to tell such cattledung as an official statement.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Bad ideas like this one seem to have a life if their own in marketing departments.
True this minute. However it was not true when the bagel worm and others were infecting everything they could find through open ports. It was not true when the spectacular stupidity of allowing arbitrary code inside images to run was a feature inside the entire Microsoft software range. While a firewall can protect you against the first it is instances similar to the second that can not be dealt with unless you have third party software to do so. We have a shambolic heap of MSDOS stuck to a incomplete VMS rip and a stolen web browser with appalling ideas like ActiveX piled on top - it needs adult supervision of some kind.
That's a good one, but there's also this suggestion from TFA:
. A company in the business that AVG is in should have seen this coming, what makes you think more of the same "quality" is not in the future?
No, I certainly won't be looking. There are just a handful of companies which *listen* to its customers. There fewer that listen to the users of their product which use it for free.
AVG shown that at least they do listen to their users, and are likely to rectify when they screw up. Similar to what happened with Netflix.
A bad company is not one which makes wrong choices, we all make wrong choices. But when the company is not able to acknowledge their errors and rectify, is when you should start looking for someone else to make business with.
I use AVG Free and recommend it to all the people who come to ask me for an Antivirus. The truth (in my opinion) is that such a thing should be provided with Microsoft Windows for free, after all it is the fault of their crappy Operating System that the computers get all infected.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You mean you've seen no alerts from Virus Scanners?
bickerdyke
Can you prove it? Rootkits? Priviledge escallation? Malware != virus != bot ... Anyone? Even if it were true, it does not prove your tactic is a good one... you just might have been lucky... Ditching firewall(neither for private nor public IP) is not a good idea. First, there are many programs that open ports. And second, there isn't a day that my outer perimeter isn't under constant attacks.
Those switches no longer work in the latest installers from Grisoft.
I began using AVG Free several years ago and liked it so much I purchased a two-year licence for the Pro version. It ran beautifully on my ancient P4 1.7GHz XP Pro machine, never noticed any performance hit. I also recommended it and installed in on many friends computers. Then came version 8.0. What a nightmare. The first time, I let it install everything and I could barely open my web browser afterwards. I uninstalled it and then did a custom install and deleted everything except the anti-virus/malware/rootkit options. Since I use IMAP for email, I didn't install the email plugin either since it doesn't support IMAP. Performance hit was still huge. Just right-clicking on a file, any file, it would take anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute for the context menu to appear. Totally unacceptable. Trying to copy a file from one disk to another would take forever. I used PROCEXP to look at what was going on, AVG was sucking up every processor cycle on every task I tried to perform. I emailed with their tech support, which was very attentive, I can not fault them on that, but there simply was no resolution that worked. Finally, I had to give up using AVG even though I still have many months left on my license. I'm now using Avast! and it is performing very well. I see no noticeable performance hit at all. I may go ahead and purchase a license for the full Avast!. I just hope they don't "upgrade" and disappoint me as well.
news just in, whirlpool hit with a new torrent of traffic due to posting on slashdot... mmm irony.
Granted; its not aimed at the "desktop market" and as such won't have those fancy screens with a big "scan now" button. I can see that this will put some people off. But for all of us who don't care for those fancy pancy features and focus at functionality I'd suggest looking at ClamAV for Windows.
I've been using this on my computer at work for some time now and I have to say that it is a lot less irritating than most other products. There is one caveat; be sure to grab the PThreads DLL since ClamAV depends on it.
This is what I'm switching to:
http://www.moonsecure.com/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I've been doing the same thing for years, every once in a wile I use a version of norton or mcafree, avg and I haven't found any virus's yet.
I actually bought AVG 8.0 (been using the free edition for years and felt guilty), then immediately uninstalled it.
The problem? Crashing my machine left and right. I could reliably crash winamp by opening small files, and other programs acted very very oddly.
Uninstalled, and the problems went away.
You can disable the safe search plug in pretty easily in IE. Just go to Tools, Internet Options. Take the Program tab, and push the Manage Add-Ons button. Find AVG Safe Search in the list and click it, then select disable. Hit OK, then OK again. Done.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
its easily disabled if you just disable the plugin in firefox and or UGH IE
Why uninstall it? Why not just turn off the link checking feature. That's what I do.
Technoli
Too late. I just switched to Avast yesterday and I'm loving it. With a promise that 90% or more of viruses out there can be detected and removed, I'm staying with Avast. I used AVG for years. I was happy until undating to version 8.0. The new 8.0 version is bloated and its Link scanner is incompatable with Firefox 3.
Just go into Firefox and disable the AVG extension (make sure AVG thinks it's "on"). After that, AVG will leave you the hell alone if you don't want to use it.
Then AVG will be happy and you won't have to use the stupid thing.
1) I use Firefox + Noscript & Flashblock, never IE. I've been to plenty of dodgy websites, but I don't let them run scripts and there haven't been any 0-days that could get through this combination. That said, it *IS* a pain to temporarily allow scripts all the time (permanent allow is _rare_ for me).
2) I disabled autoplay ages ago.
3) I don't open the crap family & friends send to me. They're all jokes and crap, anyhow. And yes, I use OO.o anyhow, so Office based macro exploits are unlikely to work.
In other words, the only virus I ever had was that one I downloaded deliberately to examine. I still run AV anyhow, but I haven't really needed it. A better argument would be that the rest of the family occasionally uses this computer and they might need it. But even then...
The first thing I did after installing the new version was disable the LinkScanner. No more problem, it works fine except for a little complaining about it being turned off
So.. One thing that is NOT clear at all.. Is this fix going to be rolled out to ALL AVG users, or just the NZ/Australians who brought this up? If it was a stupid design flaw by AVG, in Australia, its STUPID here in the US too... I read pretty much of the threads in the article, and this tiny bit of info never was made clear...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Can you prove it? Rootkits? Priviledge escallation? Malware != virus != bot ... Anyone? Even if it were true, it does not prove your tactic is a good one... you just might have been lucky...
All the time I used to spend running AVG free, AdAware, Spybot S&D, I would scan regularly and come up with nothing. Month after month. I still occasionally scan the entire drive but it still comes up blank. Running as a Limited User is pretty good protection against all sorts of malware. http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/pages/TOC.aspxRead Aaron Margosis's weblog.
Ditching firewall(neither for private nor public IP) is not a good idea. First, there are many programs that open ports. And second, there isn't a day that my outer perimeter isn't under constant attacks.
I agree. That's why I run with the XP SP2 Firewall (waaaaaaaay better than the original XP ICF) straight out of the box. I don't use any third-party firewalls like Zone Alarm any more.
Squirrel!
I am actually quite sup prised to find this discus ion on /., I was previously under the impression that most /. readers/contributors were technically proficient and would have just done what I did:
Background: I use AVG but I dont have anything running constantly, I just use the x64 avgscana.exe in the context menu to scan files when needed.
My mother however is not so proficient so the active scanner is running on startup on her PC.
When I updated her to AVG8 I noticed this Link Scanner thing and thought; 'that sucks' and deactivated it in the AVG GUI.
Then it kicked up a fuss saying one of the components is in an error state so I reactivated it and simply disabled the add-on in Firefox.
Everyone is happy.
With a recent update, it is possible to disable components through the GUI and tell it to ignore their status so the tray icon does not report any problems.
So there is no need to switch for this reason but you may have others.
You need to run some funky command line with an * in it and add the switch /turn_off_scanning or similar.
And people complain about linux being arcane!
Your day job is writing for Shelly the Republican , right?
Thanks. I actually already did that, but the problem is, the component obviously still is somewhere in my system and I'd like to get rid of it all together. But as I mentioned in my previous post, IE doesn't let me delete it. Only disable it.
You can install AVG without Link Scanner if you make a shortcut to the AVG install, and then right-click, select properties, and then add this to the filename in the target field:
/REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
Then just run your modified shortcut every time you want to install AVG on a machine. This way it won't nag you with the "you are not protected" exclamation mark for not installing Link Scanner, either.
This will be good enough for any people you support who are used to AVG and don't want to switch to another AV product. I agree with others that AVG has probably jumped the shark with version 8, though.
Let's see it's been about 10-11 years for me, safe(er) browsing/downloading habits, hardware/software firewall combo and I feel pretty safe. I run AVG to scan my downloaded torrents. Funny thing is the one and only virus I ever did have was found on my very first 486, running Win 3.11 for Workgroups. I had a boot sector virus on the hard disk that was attached to the sound cards IDE controller, dam those were the days! But the anti-virus at the time was on some unlabeled disc that came with my 33.6k modem.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
You fling these terms around like you know something. But your standard antivirus program is not going to catch rootkits or security vulnerabilities in existing software. He said nothing about ditching his firewall. Pretty much everyone connects through a router nowadays, and the firewall is comparable to or trounces anything you can install. Your computer is a lot more likely to be compromised than your router anyway, so having the firewall on the computer it's protecting isn't as nice as having it on a separate device. Bottom line is, for a home user who is minimally competent at not downloading and running random files, antivirus is fairly useless.
If you use Firefox 3.0, disable the "feature". Go to Tools->Addons and turn it off.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
I had AVG 7.5 on my wife's computer. It kept bugging me to install AVG 8 by saying there would be no more virus definitions after June 30th. So, I tried to upgrade-THREE TIMES! Every time its installer crashed. I even uninstalled 7.5 and it STILL crashed. Then I went to DSL Reports and read all the complaints about AVG 8.0, so I put Avast! on her computer. It works GREAT!
Get a Mac, then you don't have to deal with this nonsense.
Accessing every webpage you see a link to multiplies the bandwidth you use by at least an order of magnitude.
On the other hand on today's modern web, the HTML page only accounts for a small fraction of all the content that is fetched from a webserver. The bulk of what your browser downloads is all the various other flashy shiny and blinking stuff that are added to "enhance" your browsing experience. You know, all these "punch the monkey" flash crapplets.
AVG scanner doesn't download them, only the main HTML page and associated scripts (i.e.: where dangerous code could actually be hidden). Not even the CSS associate with those pages.
If you want to actually improve your browsing experience and have better use of your bandwith install some tools to kill all this useless flash (adblock+, flashblock or noscript). Your firefox will also gain stability with the same move.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Right; you can just run a custom install and uncheck the parts you don't want. It's easier.
In the last few months I noticed my bandwidth usage increased from an average of 5-6 Gb/month to about 9-10, I wasn't sure why. I also upgraded to AVG 8.0 on all my comps in the last couple months. Could this use up that much bandwidth? Most of my usage is plain web surfing and updates to 4 networked Comps and 2 laptops. I want to drop my service with my ISP to the lowest level which will drop me from 12 Gb to 7 Gb/month (I have Satellite Internet). I think I will switch to Avast and see if my bandwidth drops.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Haven't you heard about drive by attacks? One does not need to download/run anything, just visit compromised site, and it happens that even high profile sites are compromised, most often through XSS. And the firewall for PC behind "router"(you'd better use "NAT" or ip masquarade) is quite usefull most often when there is more than one PC on the local net. And when you are mentioning "router", most of them feature WIFI AP and as we all know, the average Joe does not change the default setting so anyone can play pranks on Joe's local net ;)
I'm using Avira now but I'm considering switching again because of the pop-ups. Any advice?
The site below has instructions for disabling the pop-ups:
http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm
> AVG shown that at least they do listen to their users, and are likely to rectify when they screw up.
Ahem, such as when you'd Google for a solution to how many users can't get the Auto Update function to work, and the link to an article in Grisoft's FAQ gives a 404 because they deleted that article? That's not listening or rectifying.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
This thing repeatedly crashed my browser!
About 3 times out of 4, when I would click on a link before AVG had finished scanning all 100 links on my Google search, it would crash the browser.
Maybe it was just my browser (at work and at home), but that's what prompted me to turn the sucker off.
Many virus scanners, including AVG, are a little over zealous. They report some things as bad that aren't. Ones that commonly get flagged are trainers for video games. Reason is they do things like monitor the keyboard and hook in to other processes. However they are doing it to let people cheat in games, not for nefarious purposes. However you'll find that some virus scanners get all worked up about them, while others don't.
Just because you switch scanners and the new one goes off, doesn't mean your old one did a bad job. You need to evaluate what it is finding. Also there's the consideration of things like malware/adware scanning. Some virus scanners check for this, some don't, and what they check for varies. The reason is the whole malware thing isn't as clear. Something I consider malware, another user may be perfectly ok with. Also since it comes with software sometimes and removing it can break the software, some virus scanners dont' mess with it, leaving that instead to anti-malware apps like Windows Defender.
So don't be too quick to judge on numbers.
Was this AVG thing deemed evil? Bad for the internet? Fasterfox it's a very popular Firefox extension that's even worse. Fasterfox downloads every link, not only from a Google search, but from every page you visit. And this thing is offered by Mozilla addons site at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269 (though it still hasn't bee updated for Firefox 3). I hope someone follows this article's example and remove this thing from the Mozilla's site.
That's a moronic statement. It is along the lines of saying "Don't lock the door, just sleep with a shotgun next to your bed." Yes, I'll admit the shotgun would be far more useful at stopping a determined attacker IF (and only if) you notice the person and can act.
AV programs are just another level in having good defense in depth, and being proactive about security. What that philosophy means is:
1) You don't have a single point of security, you have multiple levels. There isn't one failure point. Thus if something slips through one level, it isn't in the clear.
2) You have security systems that don't rely on someone minding after them, in addition to ones that do. Thus if there is a slip in vigilance, that can't necessarily be exploited because there are automated systems.
3) You don't assume things are secure just because you haven't faced attack there before. You look for potential weaknesses and work on ways to secure those.
This is the way to achieve good security, and to do it while maintaining good usability. Sure, we could tell everyone that every program has to be isolated in it's own VM. That'd be totally unusable and only (sort of) secure until there's an exploit to the VM program (which has happened to VMWare at least once before). Or we could be smart about it: We run a virus scanner, a malware scanner, a software firewall on the PCs, a hardware firewall on the network, we patch our systems, we have good security policies (like using UAC/sudo). Then things are still perfectly usable, and even if people drop their guard, even if an attack gets in through something, it is unlikely to be a real problem.
So even if you are a pro user, run a virus scanner anyhow. Will you need it? Probably not. However proactive security and defense in depth are the way to go.
I've been following this whole thing on Slashdot and I've been reconsidering who I may use for virus scanning (currently AVG). The problem I find with the recommendations on Slashdot is that everyone seems to be limiting themselves to only free options. Now that's fine, and I won't say no to free if that's the really what's best (for example I find Imgburn superior to any commercial burning program I've tried) however I don't have a problem paying for AV protection. Indeed I pay for AVG. I like having an outbound firewall and Kerio isn't 64-bit.
So supposing money isn't an issue, what do you recommend?
Also FYI I'd be hesitant in recommending Bitdefender. I used to have a license and it caused BSODs on a few systems. More research turned up that this isn't uncommon, has been around for quite a few versions, and they don't really seem to be fixing it.
I like it. As far as I can tell, it doesn't check every single link, only search results. I see the search results first then the results of the scan so it doesn't slow me down. As for overworked servers, that's not MY problem. If y'all had kept your mouths shut, you would have collected all the extra revenue from your advertisers. Smooth move.
Another question, why does this only mention AVG Free? Will the AVG Pro users keep DOSing google search Top 10?
1) http://www.google.com/ ...
2) "childrens swimwear"[Return]
3) 30,000,000 results returned, showing 100
4) Link 76: Pre-teen in swimwear! Children naked!
5) Linkscanner polls page, ISP log records it.
6)
7) Prison cell with a burly sexually repressed biker called Roody, who just happens to know what you were charged with.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/